Folktales of Palestine

Lebanon
Producer: Jinane Dagher
Production Company: Orjouane Productions

Project Logline:

‘A Folktale of Palestine’ is a journey in search of love stories set in Palestine in the first half of the 1900s. About unusual love stories and the bonds they create across generations, across geographies. Palestine before the collective uprooting, the Nakba of 1948. A search for the legacy of a place, of villages and cities, carried inside the lives of the characters of this film, scattered along a vast geography. The film engages with a time and place when borders weren’t as defined and rigid. They allow us to imagine the possibilities that could have been that can still be. It is an attempt to reconcile personal and family histories and open up the possibilities of love and change beyond the borders of our homes. Moving between characters in the past and the present, the film meshes together an intergenerational thread that binds us together. These love stories, however bitter or sweet they may be, in the passing down and re-telling connect us to the historical and social forces at play and how people fight against injustice, find love and belonging. The film is a folktale between reality and the imagination, meshing real stories and archival material with animation, shadow puppetry and song.

Dahna Abourahme is a Palestinian filmmaker who has lived in Abu Dhabi, Amman and New York. She currently lives in Beirut, where she teaches and mentors in the field of documentary production and representation. In 2004, she completed her first documentary, ”Until When…” a personal portrait of four Palestinian families living in Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank. Her latest documentary, The Kingdom of Women, documents the community and organizing spirit of the women of Ein El Hilweh Palestinian Refugee Camp in south Lebanon.